


When Skies Are Grey

by Error401



Series: In and Out [3]
Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkward glances, Bruised!Glenn, Daryl and a shotgun, Gen, M/M, Mild Language, Racist Language, no zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Error401/pseuds/Error401
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of all the bad ideas Glenn has had over the years, this is the one with the greatest potential for getting him killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Skies Are Grey

**Author's Note:**

> The people of TWD fandom are so nice, Ican'teven.

Out of all the bad ideas Glenn has had over the years, this is the one with the greatest potential for getting him killed.

It was comically easy to find information about the Dixon brothers. Someone had created an entire website dedicated to their prolific criminal activity, sponsored by some kind of white supremacy group. The header consisting of their mug shots and cartoon-animated blood leaking from the sides of their mouths. It looked like they had made a name for themselves in certain circles, and Glenn shuddered at a particularly disturbing picture of the older Dixon smiling and pointing to a swastika spray-painted on a wall. 

There were various pictures of Merle and Daryl, sometimes apart, but most of the time standing next to each other. Glenn couldn’t tear his eyes away from Daryl’s face, there was just something about it. Half of the time, Daryl looked uncomfortable to be caught up with Merle, but the rest of the time, he looked like he was enjoying it just as much. There were crime scene photos, pools of blood, snapshots of bruises, graffiti, mutilated animals, little captions with information about what the crime was and how no one could ever prove anything beyond circumstantial evidence that the Dixons had done it. 

Glenn didn’t know what to do with this information. 

A guy who liked painting racial slurs on the sides of train cars didn’t sound like a guy who’d rescue a Korean in need. But Glenn was sure that Daryl was the one from the hospital, who the nurse had said practically carried him all the way there. Glenn owed him. 

According to the internet, there were two Daryl Dixons in his immediate fifty-mile radius. Well that certainly narrowed it down. But then again, he supposed Daryl Dixon was about as common a name as Glenn with two ns. 

The moment he pulled up to the first house, he had a feeling that he had chosen correctly. It was on the outskirts of one of the poorer suburbs, woodsy and yet the wrong side of the tracks at the same time. He was lucky he drove such a crappy car, because it fit in with the rest just fine and hopefully wouldn’t be stolen on account of its worthlessness. 

The house Daryl Dixon #1 lived in looked a few rusty nails away from collapsing. The white paint had yellowed and was peeling off in sloughing chunks from the front and the siding. An upstairs window was spider-webbed with cracks, and the bottom floor didn’t even look like it had windows, only insect netting or a screen of some kind to keep the critters out at night. The middle step leading up to the porch was cracked, the wood splintering and making stepping on it seem like the least inviting thing in the entire world. The roof was half-covered with a blue tarp, and through the knee-high grass of the front yard, Glenn spied a few shingles dry-rotting where they had fallen.

He swallowed. 

He opened the door of his hatchback and pulled the key from the ignition, shoving it into his left front pocket. He reached into his right and pulled out the unsealed envelope there, tapping it nervously against his thigh before rising slowly to his feet. He found that he might as well start everything with an arm around his middle, because that was the only way to make it hurt a little less. 

The drive that he began to hobble up was more dirt than gravel, one of the very few that must have been left unpaved in the entire city. The little rocks underfoot dug into the bottoms of his ancient sneakers, the soles so thin that he had reinforced them with duct tape. The closer he got to the house, the more he wanted to back out and run away, but he had already gotten this far, and besides, he was incapable of running.

Finally, he reached the porch steps, taking the first one with a wince as it screeched into the relative quiet of the afternoon. “Well why don’t you just wake up the whole neighborhood, idiot,” Glenn muttered to himself, somehow managing to skip the dilapidated step and make it to the top one. He stared at the door in front of him, looking for any sign of a doorbell, or a knocker, or even a slot that he could drop the envelope in, but there was nothing. Of course. Taking a deep breath and bracing himself, he raised the hand holding the envelope and knocked, the sound coming out way louder than he had intended. 

He waited a few seconds. Took another breath to try and calm his overexcited heart. Looked like no one was home. What a relief. Carefully, he dropped the envelope on the threadbare mat in front of the door and toed it until it slid under the frame. There. His debt to Daryl was paid, and now he didn’t owe the potentially psychotic but strangely endearing man anything.

He turned around and made it painfully down the steps once more when he heard the sound of the door opening. Well, shit. 

“Hey, ‘the fuck are you?” a raspy voice called.

Glenn decided that it was in his best interest to pretend he hadn’t heard anything. He attempted to speed up his pace, but it looked like the handful of aspirin he’d taken that morning had begun to wear off. 

“I’m talkin’ to you!” the voice yelled again, now sounding angry. Closer than before. 

Glenn froze. “Umm,” he said. “I just…”

“Turn around and keep them hands where I can see ‘em!”

Glenn did what he was told, because that sounded an awful lot like a gun being cocked. 

“You,” Daryl said, narrowing his eyes. “I know you from somewhere, chink?” All Glenn could look at was the shotgun gripped confidently in both arms. 

“Umm,” Glenn said. “Th-the hospital. You helped me. Get to the hospital,” he stuttered nervously.

“Oh,” the gun was lowered. “Yeah, I remember.”

They stared across the porch at each other. Daryl looked exactly the same as Glenn remembered him, dirt and arms and all. Glenn cleared his throat and pulled at the bill of his cap nervously. 

“Why you here?” Daryl finally asked, taking a few steps in Glenn’s direction, close enough that Glenn could see droplets of sweat forming against his hairline. “Ain’t the place fer you to be.”

“I wrote it all down,” Glenn offered. “It’s…it’s in the envelope. Under the door.”

“Tell me.”

Glenn swallowed, distinctly felt his own sweat winding its way down his back and neck. “Some police officers asked me questions about what happened to me, and I mentioned your name to them.” At Daryl’s angry scowl, “I told them that a man named Daryl helped me! That he wasn’t the one who attacked me, but they didn’t want to believe me. They showed me your picture—“

“So you fuckin’ sold me out, huh, Chinaman?” Daryl growled, knuckles tightening around the gun as he approached Glenn even more, leaving only a few feet between them as he descended the porch steps. 

“No!” Glenn held his free hand out in an appealing gesture. “I told them that it wasn’t you, that I didn’t recognize you! I swear! Once I thought you’d get in trouble, I lied. I lied to the police for you, okay?” He didn’t even know what was coming out of his mouth at that point, Daryl was putting him so on edge.

“Why?” Daryl asked, face going slack, expressionless. 

“Because…you helped me,” Glenn said. “You didn’t have to. You could have just left me there, and I woulda’ never known the difference.”

“Thought about it,” Daryl shrugged. 

“I just wanted…I just wanted to warn you that the police might come asking around. I’m an awful liar, and I know they didn’t believe me.” Glenn bit his bottom lip as he adjusted his arm. 

Daryl’s eyes narrowed again, but this time in contemplation rather than anger. He nodded. Glenn took that as his dismissal. He nodded back.

He fully intended to go back down the driveway and never turn back. He did. But when he turned to leave, he let out a little unwilling gasp as the purple skin pulled over his ribs. And Daryl heard him. 

“Hold up,” Daryl grunted, setting the gun down in the grass. “Why you movin’ so much if you still hurtin’, stupid?” Before Glenn could protest, Daryl was right in his face, eyes flicking over his still-swollen face and red-bruised eyes. He looked over Glenn’s shoulder. “That piece of shit yours?”

“Her name is Yoona, and she has feelings, you know,” Glenn muttered, smiling in agreement at the fact that his car was indeed a piece of shit. 

“Keys,” Daryl said. 

“What?”

“Fuckin’—“ Daryl rolled his eyes and, before Glenn could stop him, reached into Glenn’s front jeans pocket and pulled his keys out, dangling them in front of his face. “Keys!”

“Wait, what are you doing?” Glenn asked nervously, trying to force back the blush that he knew was staining his face.

“Fetchin’ your shit,” Daryl grunted. “Stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> <3 and XOs


End file.
